It’s nights like these, where Matthew Schaefer is flying and the crowd is booming and the power play is actually functioning, where you can see the vision. All that promise. All that passion. And at the end of it, a beaming Victor Eklund scoring his first NHL goal and hearing the crowd serenade him with “Happy Birthday” on the night he turned 20.
“Don’t know the word, but some tears come,” Eklund, still on cloud nine, said in the dressing room. “I was so happy.”
The Islanders, for much of training camp, looked like a team that is still on its way to the launchpad. Maybe they are and maybe they aren’t. Two games isn’t much to judge on, and one rollicking 6-0 win in the home opener even less.
What Saturday night does affirm is that there is so much potential, even if the bigger-picture timeline is unclear. Everyone knows that, of course, but stating it like a slogan in preseason is a different thing from seeing it play out in the regular season.
How many nights like this can the Islanders have this year? Put away the question for the time being and focus on Saturday, where Eklund’s goal and assist underlined an all-around performance from the Islanders.
“I think the fans are so excited and they should be,” Bo Horvat told The Post. “A lot of young talent and good hockey players. To be received like that and play as well as we did in front of the home crowd definitely feels great.”
The line blender on which Pete DeBoer hit puree after Wednesday night turned up something good. Simon Holmstrom, JG Pageau and Anthony Duclair fit like a glove. Emil Heineman complemented Bo Horvat and Kyle Palmieri well. Ondrej Palat, quietly, has had an excellent start to the season on a resurgent fourth line, and Eklund never looked out of place in the top six.
“He’s always in the right spot defensively,” DeBoer said. “He’s got real good attention to detail for a young player. Pretty rare to have that. You know the offense is there and that’s going to grow as he gets older and stronger and gets more minutes, all those things. But to have that foundation that you can play him and not have to worry about getting him off the ice against Jack Hughes tonight is important.”
Hughes and the Devils — who lost 9-0 on Long Island last season — were left with verbal shoulder shrugs. Sheldon Keefe told reporters it felt like his team was playing preseason hockey and the Islanders were in February.
The flurry of goals started by Eklund at 11:32 of the third that made it 4-0 before Palat scored less than a minute later — Casey Cizikas scored the last goal of the night shorthanded in the final minutes — only put an exclamation mark on an evening in which the Islanders were, in Keefe’s words, “on another level.”
The Islanders were equal to the speed and physicality of a Devils side that figures to challenge for the Metropolitan Division. They got to the net, and it paid off against a shaky Nico Daws.
Schaefer, who drew the biggest cheer of introductions and heard his name chanted by the UBS crowd within 90 seconds of puck drop, set up two of the Islanders’ three second-period goals, breaking the game open with a superb piece of hand-eye coordination. Schaefer swatted the puck out of the air to keep it in and then sent a cross-ice pass to Bo Horvat below the right dot to make it 3-0 12:08 into the third.
It was Horvat’s 100th goal with the Islanders, his 200th point with the Islanders and the first power play goal of the season for a club that desperately needs a five-on-four boost. Indeed, after a miserable first outing, the Islanders’ power-play units threatened repeatedly before Horvat finally hit pay dirt.
Before that, Eklund notched his first assist of the season after snagging Schaefer’s rebound off the boards and feeding Brayden Schenn from just behind the net.
That doubled a lead which Holmstrom had opened at 3:32 of the second, finishing a rush with Pageau to score the year’s first goal at UBS.
The Devils couldn’t say they were terribly outplayed. The match was up-and-down for stretches, with high-danger chances and expected goals close to even for much of the night. Ilya Sorokin, who finished a 37-save shutout, was a difference-maker, especially on the penalty kill, but the Islanders never left him to fend for himself.
“It promotes a belief in what you’re doing,” DeBoer said. “If you don’t win games then it’s hard to build that.”
